ktema es aei
by Cerberusia
Summary: Eight Christmases, eight moments: an incestuous love story told in eight acts with copious gratuitous literary references because James and Albus have a taste for Muggle literature. James Sirius/Albus Severus


**A/N: **'ktema es aei' is a phrase from Thucydides, meaning 'a possession for all time'. Also, the British Museum really does sell mugs with excerpts from the Rosetta Stone on them, in both white and black to suit your fancy :)

* * *

**i.**

James is back from his first year at Hogwarts for the Christmas holidays, and takes the opportunity to make up the most outrageous lies to tell his brother about it. Albus doesn't fall for them, but James likes to make him laugh. Today is New Year's Eve, and although neither of them like the cold, James has spent the afternoon out in the snow while Albus, who can't bear it at all, has curled up on the sofa with a book, wrapped in one of Grandma's snuggly jumpers. It's late afternoon and the sun is just setting to tint the pale blue winter twilight with purple. Without being told, James understands that it's time to go back inside.

He hangs up his coat and scarf and gloves and wanders into the living room to find Albus nearly asleep over _The Three Musketeers_. James is not stupid or unintellectual by any means, but he does sometimes wonder if it's quite _normal_ for a ten year old to be reading books that thick.

His hands are cold, even after an hour in mittens with Warming Charms on them and now being inside. He looks at Albus, who looks so toasty in his new teal jumper, and conceives an idea, which he hastily executes: he creeps over to the sofa, keeping low to the ground - then springs upon Albus and shoves his cold hands up that jumper, fingers digging into Albus' bare skin.

Beautiful, luxurious, searing heat. Albus wakes with a wild yell, shoving James away and shrieking that his hands are absolutely freezing and what the hell does he think he's doing. James is too shocked even to resist, and thus lands on his arse on the fireplace rug. He means to get up, but then he starts laughing and can't stop. It's not that funny, but he's a little light-headed, still caught by the enrapturing heat of his brother's skin.

"Here," he says, interrupting Albus. "Let me hug you to warm up, yeah? I won't do anything." Albus eyeballs him suspiciously, but gives in. He's something of a soft touch where James is concerned, but James doesn't mind: he knows he coddles Albus something dreadful. That's what older brothers are supposed to do.

Albus opens his arms, and James clambers onto the sofa and into them, pressing himself tight against his brother. He's bigger, so he wraps his arms around Albus and cuddles him. His warm, supple body sets sparks off on James' skin.

"I'm not a teddy bear," Albus tells him sleepily - but snuggles closer to his chest all the same.

**ii.**

Next Christmas, their parents are having a fight.

Not a big fight, they never have those - they barely fight at all, in fact - and no-one's in any worry that it'll end in messy divorce. But the atmostphere over the roast chicken (Lily doesn't like turkey) and trimmings is still distinctly strained. Afterwards, by mutual silent consensus, they all retire to do quiet activities and in the adults' case drink brandy and talk out their problems.

James finds Albus in bed, burrowed under a thick duvet and quilt, reading as usual. He must know that James is there, but doesn't react as James pads across the floor and gets into the bed beside him.

"Budge up," says James, squishing up against him to fit. Albus does, just enough that James isn't hanging off the edge of the bed but they're still in contact. James can feel his brother's warmth against his side, comfortable and comforting. He fancies he can hear Albus' heartbeat.

He leans his head on Albus' bony shoulder to catch a glance at his book. The _Illiad_. Scorpius' recommendation, no doubt - Albus prefers T. S. Elliot.

"Any good?" James asks into Albus' neck.

"Mm, I think I'm seeing the appeal. Scorpius and I are owling so I can check cultural references with him, and he's telling me all sorts of interesting things about the original Greek. My favourite is that the translation makes the sea 'wine-dark', but the Greek is actually _oinops_, which is to say 'wine-faced'."

James snorts, seeing Albus smile out of the corner of his eye. He loves it when Albus goes into literature-professor mode and is far too eloquent for an eleven year old. From what little he's seen of Scorpius Malfoy, he's not surprised they get along so well.

"I think they had a good reason for the liberal translation there," he says, trying to press closer to Albus to share more body heat - and as he does so, the hem of Albus' t-shirt rides up and James finds himself with his hand on his brother's bare hip. He stops breathing. Albus doesn't seem to notice, just scribbles another note in the margin.

They stay like that for half an hour, Albus making notes and James afraid to breathe too deeply, until Mum calls them for dinner and Albus slips effortlessly away. James follows close behind, surreptitiously rubbing his hand on his jeans to get rid of the feel of his brother's warm skin.

**iii.**

When James is fourteen, he catches his younger brother wanking.

It's a few days before they go back to school, and he wants to show Albus something in the book he got him for his birthday, back on the twenty-eighth. Having a birthday so close to Christmas is something of a pain - all your friends forget and family try to buy you one present for both - but Albus always comes through. Not only does he not buy him books about Quidditch, which all their uncles except Bill and Percy always do, but he knows precisely what James likes - _ipoetry/i_. Albus, preferring prose, has his Hugo and Dostoeyevsky while James has his Neruda and Duffy, but they like to read Elliot and Browning together. Sometimes they go into Flourish and Blotts together to find some Wizarding literature, but they agree that really Muggles did it best.

All the other boys he knows don't get along with their younger siblings. They certainly don't want to share a room with them, like Albus and he have been begging for years. He tried to be standoffish when Albus first started Hogwarts, teasing him and hitting him in a friendly way, like he sees the others do, but Albus' face, twisted in confusion and upset, stopped that pretty quickly. He'd rather make Albus smile.

This is not to say, of course, that catching him is any less awkward.

He doesn't see much: he flings open the door to find Albus on the bed with his trousers at his knees. He promptly goes bright red and covers himself with his hands.

"_James!_" he hisses, looking about to combust from embarrassment. James stands there in the doorway for a few seconds, as the fact of the matter sinks in. He wants to say something, like _didn't know you were into that yet_, but in the end he just silently closes the door and bolts back down the corridor to his own room.

He can't think. He just keeps remembering that brief glimpse of Albus' cock, red-pink and wet. He wonders for a moment what might have happened if he'd gone in and taken it in his hand, in his mouth - but he can't concentrate on anything so involved, so many impossible what-ifs. All he can do is press the heel of his hand to his gasping mouth and think of his brother's cock, aching for release and something he doesn't quite understand.

**iv.**

It's James' birthday today, and it couldn't be better.

All gifts relating to Quidditch have been surreptitiously consigned to the back of a cupboard, they don't have family round this time at James' request for a quiet birthday, and not only have Albus and Lily given him lovely presents, Uncles Charlie has sent him a beautifully bound _Encyclopaedia Draconicae_ with coloured, moving illustrations with a note attached to say that he talked to Bill and thought it might be more James' taste than his previous offerings. James is actually _ecstatic_. Another one down! Plus, dragons are really cool.

So he goes skittering down the corridor to Al's room to show him the _gorgeous_ Chinese Fireball - feeling slight deja vu as he does so - and finds him on his stomach on the bed, doing homework. Very conscientious, is Albus, more so than James himself who does the reading and understands the subject, but tends to daydream in class and forget to do the homework.

He throws himself eagerly down on the bed beside his brother, confident that Albus won't mind being pulled away from a Charms essay for _this_.

Then he realises that Albus isn't actually writing anything, but staring into space with a faintly troubled frown.

"Albus?" James nudges him with an elbow. "Whassamatter?" Albus shrugs and rolls onto his back.

"Just," he says, and shrugs again.

"Comes on," James presses, "you look proper miserable. Tell your big brother all about it."

Albus stares at the ceiling for several moments. Just as James is contemplating asking again, he says:

"Everyone else in my year has been kissed."

James thinks about this for a moment.

"I suppose for this purpose Mum and Dad don't count?" he asks. Albus doesn't even dignify that with an answer. "Nah, thought not." He trails off. Should he - of course not, Albus would think he was having him on. It's silly idea. Besides, wouldn't it count as familial? But his pulse beats out: _This is your chance. Seize it._

"Close your eyes," he says firmly. Albus side-eyes him for a moment, but does as he says.

And it's very easy to just lean over and kiss him. Very gently, like anyone might kiss their brother. Except that James' heart stops for a second, then beats frantic double time against his ribcage, as if trying to escape. His skin prickles. The kiss is chaste, even brotherly, but he feels neither. He can feel Albus breathing steadily through his nose.

He is painfully aware that the kiss has gone on too long, and draws away with as much dignity as he can manage. He can't look Albus in the eye.

"Still doesn't count," says Albus, and there's something there, but James daren't examine it. "Now come on, show me this book."

**v.**

James and Lily spend the first five days of the Christmas hols with Aunt Hermione, her kids and Viktor. Albus would have been there, but he's at the Malfoys' for the same time because it's Scorpius' birthday on the twenty first. Everyone understands: he's close to Aunt Hermione, but Scorpius needs the company more. The house is quite busy enough with four adolescents in it anyway, plus Viktor who's always willing to join in with their games. Dinner conversation focusses on literature, from Homer to Hemmingway - part of the reason James and Albus like Aunt Hermione so much is that she can discuss Muggle books and culture with them like no-one else they know. Dad never read the Classics as a kid and now he's fallen almost entirely out of touch with the Muggle world, but Aunt Hermione always knows not only what happened back then, but what's happening now. In a family which just isn't that bothered about Muggles unless they're about to discover the Wizarding world or are being gruesomely tortured, she's their best link to understanding what these authors are on about.

As usual, Lily doesn't say much, just cuts her food precisely and asks for the gravy in her quiet, low voice, but James gets the feeling she's listening to every word. She's the only Potter offspring with any interest in Quidditch, and their parents and relatives desperately nurture this interest in the hope of not all the Potters turning into antisocial bookworms, but James suspects that she'd be equally happy left to her own devices with her piano.

He wonders, not for the first time, how their parents ever produced three children like them.

Afterwards, the adults retire to the study and the children sprawl in the living room: on the sofa, in the chairs, on the floor. There's something very civilised about it: James approves.

Rose and Hugo have the same demeanour as Aunt Hermione: capable calm with a touch of steel. James wouldn't like to cross either of them, especially not Rose, who he suspects might well have been Sorted into Slytherin had her blood been a little purer. As is it, she's acquired a reputation in Ravenclaw for being something of a protector of the small: mess with one of her firsties, and you won't know what hit you - and nor indeed will anyone else, such is her inventiveness. She's utterly ruthless: James is perversely proud.

They chat about all sorts of things - books, friends, family, current affairs. Life. They're hungry for knowledge, all of them, introverted and intense. This wasn't how they were meant to turn out, James knows, but he wouldn't have it any other way. The unexamined life is not worth living.

It's usually Albus who notices the small things, the overlooked things, but James finds his attention drawn to how Rose and Hugo touch and don't touch. They sit in different chairs while James and Albus curl together on the sofa; if they reach for a sweet at the same time, they touch skin to skin only briefly, and when they walk they don't let their hips brush. This, James realises, is what normal siblings do, how normal siblings feel.

Albus presses closer to his side, and James wraps an arm around him. For warmth, he tells himself, but the warmth of Albus' skin and his own pulse betray him, as they always do.

**vi.**

At fifteen, Albus is just as withdrawn as he was at ten. Their parents try to draw him out, and when they fail they ask James to do it. You're the loud one, they say, even though he isn't and never has been. Sometimes he idly considers turning his hair blond, just to divorce himself from Grandfather James. He'd go by his middle name, like Albus is considering, but in his case it's no better.

It is true that Albus responds best to James, though: he's too-serious, but James is easygoing to make up for it and the conversation's brilliant because they _grok_ each other. They're too close, he knows, but he doesn't care because it's _brilliant_. Albus has Scorpius and James has Rose, but above all they have each other.

So it's inevitable, really, that one day in late December when they're pressed together side-by-side on Albus' bed, propped up on their elbows to read _Wuthering Heights_, the following conversation should occur:

"I wonder if Catherine knew that Heathcliff might be her half-brother," says Albus, when they finish the first part of the book. James raises his eyebrows.

"Didn't think of that," he says. "I don't think so - Emily wouldn't have missed the opportunity to jack up the angst quotient. Still, maybe outright stating the possibility of incest would have been enough to prevent publication." He shrugs. "Let's face it, possible incest is the _least_ fucked-up thing about those two." Albus laughs, and they spend a couple of moments in companionable silence. Then, out of the blue (but James knows it's not at all), he changes the topic:

"I've never been properly kissed." He doesn't look upset about this, just thoughtful.

"You have so! That time when you were moping about it two years ago-" Too late, James remembers that they had tacitly agreed not to talk about that.

"That wasn't a proper kiss." Albus rolls onto his back to look up into James' face. His mouth is slightly open. Déjà-vu.

And James says wildly, recklessly, dangerously:

"Ungrateful brat - I'll show you a proper kiss!"

And he seizes his brother's face and kisses him hard on the mouth.

He's only kissed one girl before, briefly and chastely, and truth be told he's not entirely sure what he's doing. He presses himself against Albus, sucks at his mouth and slips his tongue tentatively in. Albus opens up beneath him. A proper kiss, just like he wanted.

Albus opens his legs to let James slip between them. James is aware that this is too far, too fast, and he pulls back. He briefly catches a glimpse of Albus, wide-eyed, red-lipped, before he is hauled back down into Albus' embrace.

This time, Albus kisses him. There's no finesse, but passion fills in the gaps. He keeps hold of his brother's face and Albus clutches his shoulders. He feels uncomfortably hot, skin prickling all over.

Albus makes a noise into his mouth and holds him so tight it hurts. James gives in.

**vii.**

Two days before he turns eighteen, James has had enough.

It's Boxing Day, so everyone stays in bed 'til noon. James wakes up at nine to a silent house, which gives him plenty of time to think. For nearly eighteen years, his parents have looked at him and seen a ghost. Grandfather James, whom neither of them knew and now they're trying to make up for it by projecting onto him. If he receives one more Quidditch-related gift, or Dad assumes he's a troublemaker at school one more time, he'll scream.

He's seventeen. He's allowed to make his own choices.

After lunch, he grabs Albus and tells him he's moving out. Albus fiddles with the sleeve of his cardigan and says, finally:

"What about me?" in the same quiet, measured voice he uses for everything, and James feels awful. _It's not you, it's me_, he wants to say. He does want to stay with Albus, he wants to stay with him forever - but he has to get out of this house.

"You can visit," he says instead. "I _want_ you to visit. Besides, you turn seventeen in a couple of months and you can come live with me then. Mum and Dad won't be able to stop you." Albus' hands unclench.

"Just a couple of months," he says. "We can manage, then." And he steps forward, goes up on tiptoe and presses a small kiss into the corner of James' mouth. It's the sweetest thing, and as James goes to tell his parents that he's getting his own place come hell or high water, he finds himself thinking of that photo of Uncle Bill and Auntie Fleur on their wedding day. Bill's smile is twisted by the scar mangling one side of his face, but Fleur looks at him like he's the best thing in her life: she could have won any man she wanted, but she thought that this scarred semi-werewolf was the best prize of them all.

Neither side approved of the match but they went through with it anyway, and even now, twenty-five years on or more, James sees them move not as his parents do, having learnt to borrow and lend bits of their own space, but within a shared space entirely of their own making. They rejected the paths set out for them to have each other and be _happy_.

It's not the same: marrying a semi-were or quarter-Veela may be frowned upon, but it isn't illegal. But still James thinks of it and thinks that maybe he understands - and that, maybe, there's hope for them.

**viii.**

The new flat's a bit bare looking at the moment, but James is sure that'll change soon enough. With the pale blue of early evening filtering through the windows, it looks like something out of a Muggle film: a perfect idyll, the promised Eden.

The chairs in the living room are big and red and squashy, sharing space with a classic brown leather sofa. The armchairs back onto the two opposite buttercup yellow walls and the sofa onto the other two cream ones, so the effect is of two different rooms depending on your perspective, almost like an optical illusion. James rather likes it. It took bloody forever to find a place that was just right, and even longer to move in, but he's out of Hogwarts and out of the family home. The freedom is staggering.

He knows his parents want him to go into Auror training. He also knows perfectly well that he won't. He's toying with the idea of going to a Muggle university: thanks to Aunt Hermione's instruction he knows he can pass safely, and just this time he fancies being in a big group of people all interested in the same things as him - unlike in the Wizarding world, where higher education is gained solely one-on-one with a tutor. Besides, he wants to study Muggle literature, and while there might be one or two wizards with expertise and interest in that field, it wouldn't be the same - he wants to study it from the inside, being immersed, looking at it from the perspective from which it was written.

He feels Albus approaching more than he hears him. They've always been this way, almost psychically linked. In his more fanciful moments, Albus likes to say that their souls vibrate at the same pitch, which is a little crazy but also sweet, and James knows exactly what he means.

Albus places two mugs of hot chocolate on the table, bought from the British Museum, with excerpts from the Rosetta Stone on them - a house-warming present from Scorpius, who can naturally read the Greek on them and is apparently starting on the hieroglyphs now too. James isn't even remotely surprised.

Albus' presence behind him then, and Albus' mouth tentative on his neck - _is this permitted, is this right_ - cautious in this new environment, ready to accept a shift in the paradigm.

James tilts his head to one side, offers up his neck like some entranced maiden to a vampire, or a suppliant to a master, or a beloved to a lover. Offers himself.

It's Christmas Eve, and outside in Bloomsbury it's snowing. James watches the flakes catch on the windowsill, Albus' arms wrapped around his waist, and lifts a hand to his chest to cradle the glow-worm tenderness that beats there.


End file.
